Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Business Wire: Tessera acquires Siimpel, a provider of MEMS-based AF actuator for camera phones. Tessera will pay approximately $15M in cash, subject to various standard closing conditions. Tessera does not anticipate a revenue contribution in the second quarter of 2010 from this acquisition.

Founded in 2000, Siimpel has 42 employees and is headquartered in Arcadia, CA. The company has 65 patents and patent applications for its technology.

5 comments:

Great for Tessera, very good for the remaining Siimpel employees, very bad for most of us that bought stock. I hope Tessera can get this very promising technology back on track. It's been painful to watch the engine sputter and almost stall on this muscle car.

42 employees sounds like way too many for this transaction. The cost of holding those employees is too high and Tessera won't need them all. These guys added too many employees, which is probably why the car is stalled.

I don't understand this comment. How do you know how many employees are required to roll out real product? 42 is a low number in my opinion, esp. if MEMS fab is performed on site and there is any volume involved.

If it was just a patent-play, then that would be a different story. I don't believe that is why Tessera acquired Siimpel.

I don't know much about Siimpel since leaving in 2007, except that the subsequent implosion of Moto had a big negative impact on their business plans. But prior to that, Siimpel's MEMS AF was the best AF technology out there according to to feedback from various module makers.

Now Tessera has that technology plus EDOF. I think they are in a good position for the near future.

I think this is a first step of Tessera to move one step closer to the MEMS packaging area. If there are a lot of similarities between image sensors and MEMS Packaging, still, big difference are there between the two markets so I guess that Tessera was both interested in Siimpel bor camera module but also for specific MEMS IP, MEMS equipment & facility, people and know-how.

It seems like a lot of investment money (from Motorola, Koreans, and others) went into Siimpel--roughly $65 million. Still, Siimpel sold to Tessera for only $15. Isn't this an indication that Siimpel's MEMS-based solution is a no-go? There are some very smart people across the globe who decided that $50 million of their investment in this technology was dead money and it was time to move on, after all...